Something he was trying to tell me
by mytsie
Summary: Everywhere was different, in every way that mattered and in every way that didn't, really. The color on the walls, the sweep of the bulkheads, the intervals between the flickering lights on the consoles, it was all off, all wrong somehow. Implied Slash


_Disclaimer: If I owned Star Trek, I'm sure someone would have let me know by now._

_AN: One of several vignettes written for a meme. I think, of all of them, this one is probably my favorite. I couldn't get this sort of thing out of my head--not after Spock!Prime came in on that line. Aaanywho, it's a saccharine Baw'fest, I hope you enjoy. Crazy spoilers for Wrath of Khan, but it's old enough that no one gets to yell at me. :3_

Something he was trying to tell me.

James T. Kirk didn't remember his father—apparently he'd never actually been in the same room as the man, not for his entire life—and the string of male figures that littered his life was a sad chain of ineptitude and questionable morality. Chris Pike had been the first legitimate break in that string of ongoing failures, had been the first person to honestly engage James Kirk on a personal level, but his involvement in Kirk's life was cursory at best. Leonard Mc'Coy wasn't really old enough or well balanced enough to qualify as a mentor of any variety, and the academy hadn't provided any instructors willing to stretch the extra psychological mile. It wasn't until he'd seen the bleary, startled recognition in his eyes that Kirk realized what high expectations felt like.

Spock. The Spock from the future—from a world that should have happened, he supposed silently—he was Jim Kirk's oldest and most consistent friend. The mindmeld they had shared bled that much into him, despite the grief and horror of the scenes he was perceiving. Beneath the cold and the terror, the night and the threat of Nero, the loss of Vulcan and the potential loss of Earth, he'd felt just the edge of a tenderness, a familiarity without words. Like a cat, walking just close enough to graze, he could almost touch it before it was buried by the task at hand. When Spock, that Spock, had smiled at him on Delta Vega, he'd seen it in his eyes. A glimmer of expectation—he _knew_ that, without a shadow of a doubt, Jim Kirk could succeed, Jim Kirk was Captain of the Enterprise, and Jim Kirk could make everything right. James Kirk could only hope that he measured up, that some cosmic anomaly hadn't ruined him for it, and he could succeed like Jim Kirk had.

He'd seen that Spock immediately following his commendation and promotion and the moment held vivid in his mind.

On the veranda, overlooking the bay, the two of them had stood in comfortable silence for a very long time. In a voice both loud and subdued, as though he were speaking from some great distance in time and space, Spock had told him, in no uncertain terms, that _Jim, this is your first, best destiny._ He'd believed him and, for the first time in his life, felt completely assured of his own purpose and existence. They'd stood on the veranda for an hour, maybe two, without speaking. Inevitably, their comfortable coexistence was shattered, eventually, by the intrusion of the outside world and they were driven to separate locations by various necessities.

He'd met that Spock, _his old friend, Spock_, only a handful of times after that particular event. He'd renamed himself—Kirk never could remember what it was and always managed to call him Spock. It was fortunate that the remainder of the Vulcan people seemed to think that was the only name Kirk knew, and thus ignored his slips—and took up a position as a diplomatic liaison alongside several others that Kirk didn't recognize. Spock, the other Spock, would ignore his Spock and the two rarely shared the same room. After he'd caught them sharing a silent kettle of tea and the world hadn't ended, he'd come to the conclusion that they simply didn't enjoy one another's company. It was fine by him, the two didn't mesh in his mind.

His first officer, Spock, and his old friend, Spock, were two completely different people.

It wasn't until he'd received the orders from Starfleet that he realized just how different they were.

His old friend's replacement was a tall, irritating Vulcan man with too much forehead, strangely shaped ears, and poor taste. Kirk was accused of illogical favoritism and critical harshness by Spock, but it didn't matter. They were to take him to Antaris 5, for some conference that his Spock was unable to attend, and was to be briefed on the way. The Enterprise was in orbit for three days during his briefing, and Kirk had gone down to question his old friend about the sudden changing of the guard.

When he'd arrived, he'd shouted, and cussed, and prowled like an angry animal until the Vulcan nursemaid bent to his will and allowed him entrance to his friend's chambers. He'd been informed, in a very flat and straightforward fashion, that his friend was terminal. He hadn't believed it, not until he saw the proud shoulders and straight posture twisted in repose on the vast bed. Half lidded eyes alight with amusement drew him in, and he plastered himself against the side of that bed, afraid to lose contact with the furniture or his friend—afraid that he would slip away, unnoticed and quiet, and Kirk would be inadvertently at fault for it.

"Jim," he'd said with that same, cheerful, reminiscent lilt to his voice, "it seems this is an inopportune time, but I am relieved to see you again, old friend."

"Spock," Kirk had hissed back, and had taken both of the Vulcan's hands in his own. Spock's eyebrows had raised, and Jim scowled openly at him before seating himself on the bed beside, above him, cradling his hands in his lap, unconsciously protecting them from nonexistent forces. "Why didn't you tell me?" Spock didn't answer him right away—the sounds of his labored breathing would haunt Kirk some long time.

"Fascinating," he'd commented between breaths and Kirk frowned at him. "You do not know—."

"I do not know," Kirk interrupted and locked eyes with the man before him, "but you _are_ my friend."

There was a peaceful, albeit tense moment and the largest smile Kirk had ever seen on a Vulcan split Spock's face. With a moderate pull, Spock freed his hands from Kirk's grip and Kirk leaned forward as his hands settled on the sides of his face. Spock's fingers had been warm, familiar, and they pressed against his neck and temples with the assuredness of repetition. Spock pulled his head forward and laid a gentle kiss on Kirk's brow.

"Thank you," Spock had said so very sincerely that Kirk panicked, took a hold of his wrists, and held his hands against his face—he'd tried to ground him, keep him in the now. Spock's smile diminished slightly and Kirk frowned openly.

"Show me."

The surprise that flashed across Spock's face was too much for his control or, perhaps, in his dying moments he'd not felt the need to cover it. He was concerned, and his smile bittersweet as he'd searched Kirk's face. Whatever he saw there, whatever determination Kirk had amassed, allowed him his conclusion. His hands twisted in Kirk's loose grip and Kirk's eyes flickered to them as they took the familiar, traditional positions of the mind-meld. His fingertips were hot against the sides of Kirk's face and the delicate sorrow in Spock's eyes burned. Without thought, Kirk pressed forward and captured Spock's lips against his own—soft, pliant, and familiar, Spock kissed him. A heartbeat passed, and Kirk's mind had flooded with years upon years of memories.

Warmth, cold, pain, jubilation, sorrow, death, and love.

It was a poor explanation, the word _love_, to describe what they had. It didn't quite encapsulate the breadth, the spectrum of emotion, of learned sensation, of history that had passed between them. The way he'd strode onto the bridge and instantaneously held both respect and the trust of all aboard simply because he was Jim Kirk, how, without any knowledge or questioning, Spock was completely trusted to preform acts that would have men quaking in abject terror, acts that put hundreds if not thousands of lives on the line repeatedly. He saw through Spock's eyes, through Kirk's eyes, and felt everything between them. Intimacy, trust, vibrancy.

As Spock's presence, and the connection faded, feeling returned to his body. Slowly, he was able to extract himself from the living emotion, the memories of the lifetimes of two men, and he felt hot tears on his cheeks. When he opened his eyes, Spock had light green trails tracing the edge of his eyes and cheeks. He was still as Kirk pulled back. His hands were limp, and Kirk was too stunned to speak, too shaken to weep. He stood, left his friend, and the Vulcan nursemaid wordlessly. He couldn't attend the funeral—whether he couldn't spare the time, or bear the burden of it, he wasn't certain.

He'd returned to the Enterprise immediately, saturated with memories that were half his and all foreign.

In a breath, he'd lived two full lives and came back to his third. He was overwhelmed, and, as the Vulcan council informed him of his old friend's sudden demise, he found his mind traveling corridors of the past. He'd excused himself as the Enterprise left orbit, had tried to get drunk, to cry, to sort and manage the cascade of information, and he'd failed. Eventually, when even sleep forsook him, he found himself wandering the Enterprise—this Enterprise.

Everywhere was different, in every way that mattered and in every way that didn't, really. The color on the walls, the sweep of the bulkheads, the intervals between the flickering lights on the consoles, it was all off, all wrong somehow. All of it was wrong, all of it was different, all of it except for the one room he'd hoped would be.

Before him, circular and quartered off behind inches of transparent aluminum, stood the Dilithium Control Matrix. The design was more utilitarian than he remembered, the white just slightly off color, but the walls were identical to those in his mind and the control pedestal stood, ominously, at the center of the circular chamber. The emergency deadlock was not in place, the doors slid freely to permit the various engineers access, and the fading klaxon didn't interrupt his thoughts as he stared.

"Spock," he repeated softly and felt the emotion claw at the back of his mind—the desperation, the cracking of his voice, the sheer, unmitigated terror—but that was another life, another Kirk. His eyes followed the slow trail from the far wall, from that spot, and traveled to the edge of the deadlock threshold. He stared for some long time at the floor there, the apex of the wall and the aluminum panes, hollow and silent.

"I have always been, and always shall be..." his voice caught and his stomach turned as the memory replayed fresh in his mind, "your friend."

He stared at the threshold, hands clasped behind his back—whether this was an imitation of his old friend, or the rigid stance he'd used once, to eulogize him, he wasn't entirely certain—and he felt as though the weight of both worlds had been placed squarely onto him. Kirk's grip on his wrist tightened, clenched until his knuckles were white and the bones of his arm grated against one another. He wanted to blame someone, anyone—a man he'd never met, a son he'd never had, a woman he'd never slept with, the person he'd never become—anyone but his friend.

His old friend. The fresh memory of his passing mingled with the memory of his death and Kirk clenched his teeth. The sensation of aluminum between their hands and the impression of fingertips against his temple. A crowd surrounding him, a silent chamber void of life. He closed his eyes briefly, and exhaled through his nose as he sorted his mind, pulled the cards apart and tried to reorder them in some sensible way.

"Captain?" Scotty's brogue cut through his reverie and, for a moment, he heard both worlds with equal clarity--_Sir, he's dead already._

"Yes, Mr. Scott," _I know_. Kirk's voice must have been deeper, rougher than he'd imagined, because Scotty didn't speak immediately. Kirk pulled his eyes away from the floor, fully intending to turn and speak to his Chief Engineer. Instead, he stopped, drawn in by the reflection off the glossy aluminum. The sudden affirmation of this reality hit him hard, harder than he'd like, and he was conversely grateful that his memories were from a time that would never happen. He traced his own face, the familiar cut of his uniform, and silently expected to see a red jacket. When his eyes met the awkward expression of Montgomery Scott, Scotty straightened under the reflected scrutiny.

"Is there somethin' yer needin', Captain?" Scotty prompted and Kirk sighed heavily.

"Do you know how to play the Bagpipes, Mr. Scott?" Kirk asked plainly and the look Scotty gave him was confused, and tinged with a bit of incredulity.

"Ae', that is," Scotty stumbled over his words and furrowed his brows, "No, sir, I cannae' play the bagpipes." Kirk frowned, another inconsistency, something else that was unquestionably different, oddly wrong. As the thought settled in, he broke his stance, waved his hand to dismiss the thought, and forced a smile as he turned away from the Dilithium Control Matrix. Away from the only similarity he didn't want.

"Just wondering, you know," Kirk announced wryly, "might do well at parties."

"Bagpipes?" Scotty scowled halfheartedly at the implication and rolled his eyes before walking off, muttering, "Aye' ne'er heard such a' fool thing as bagpipes—at a party!"

Kirk could feel the small room, cold and innocuous, at his back as he walked away, listlessly, through Main Engineering. His eyes were unfocused and his mind both numb and racing—the ensigns darting two and fro alternated between the worlds. Sometimes they were in red shirts and regulation pants, and sometimes they were wearing white jumpsuits, they smelled of smoke and fear—all the time, however, they backed away from him with the same confused reverence. It was a consistency he didn't appreciate, but it comforted him. One less point to sort, one less differentiation to make.

"Jim?" He heard Bones before he saw him, if he really did at all. _Are you out of your Vulcan mind?--You'll flood the whole compartment!_ "Are you alright?"

"No," he stated blandly, and kept walking. Bones fell back after some time, his stare faded sometime after that, and Kirk's feet kept him moving forward. He had to keep moving, or the past might take him in, swallow him up. He couldn't go through it again, couldn't risk it. He'd seen Spock die twice now and had felt the loss of ages.

When he came back to himself, he mistook a brunette Yeoman for a Vulcan recruit—one he would never meet here—and ordered her out before he even realized where he was. He couldn't go back to the bridge, not yet. The bridge was loud, the familiar faces were younger, different. _His_ chair, that empty chair—his stomach plummeted to his knees as he recalled it—wouldn't be empty. His old friend was gone, but his younger self was still here. It wasn't the same—he wasn't the same—Spock wasn't the same. Spock died, and yet Spock was always there to take his place.

He was in the jettison airlock bay, his feet had taken him through the forward progression of time admirably, even if he didn't appreciate the particular era. There were no cadets bearing flag and whistle, there was no service, and thankfully there was no cold black case. Spock had been burned this time, converted into dust and ash, converted forcibly into the soil of this New Vulcan. Kirk had been in his quarters during the perfunctory ceremony. None of Spock's friends had been in attendance—they were all here, with Spock. The ensigns utilizing the jettison airlock left, one by one, as their tasks were completed. Eventually, Kirk found himself alone, staring at the platform.

It was a strange sensation, then, when he realized that Spock was standing behind him.

The pull of his memory felt distant, nostalgic, and dull—Spock's presence didn't cut through the haze, didn't disturb the continuity of it as Scotty, as Mc'Coy had, but it felt fuzzy, awkward to have him there. Here Kirk was, trapped in the memory of a death that hadn't happened, wouldn't happen, and did happen, and the man he was mourning was simultaneously dead and standing three feet from his back. If he'd been more academic, he might have found the sensation interesting.

"Captain," Spock began dryly, flatly, and Kirk could almost hear his old friend in that voice, "Your grief is unsubstantiated."

Spock moved alongside him, but Kirk couldn't manage to care. He could hear the sorrowful playing of Scotty, the soft sobs of Uhura, the catch in Sulu's commands, and Chekov's restrained breathing. Beside him, somewhere behind his left shoulder, he could feel Saavik and her sorrow resounded with his own. As Spock, this Spock, stopped mere centimeters from him, he heard the whistle and released a heavy sigh.

"My grief is unsubstantiated," Kirk repeated, attempting to find some truth in that statement. _Don't grieve, admiral, tis' logical._ Something in his chest tightened and his expression felt hard, his shoulders tired, and his bones too weary for his youthful frame. Spock was staring at him, very intensely, but it felt as though his scrutiny glanced off of this new-old moment. "Unsubstantiated," Kirk muttered unconsciously and Spock's eyes narrowed slightly.

"It is illogical," Spock pointed out in a tone significantly stronger than was particularly necessary, or welcome. Kirk's loose frown pulled into an open scowl in the dead silence of the bay.

"Illogical?" Kirk repeated tightly.

"To grieve for a life that has not passed," Spock elaborated dryly, "is most illogical."

_It's too late—Jim, you'd better get down here—I never took the Kobayashi Maru test until now, what do you think of my solution?_

Kirk's muscles tensed and he lashed out before the voices finished echoing in his mind. His left fist connected with Spock's jaw with an audible crack—he didn't take the time to ascertain if it was his hand, or Spock's jaw that made the sound. His hand resounded sharp pain, and his second echoed it as he swung low and caught his first officer just under his ribs. Spock recovered quickly, and struck him sharply in the arm before the third blow fell—but Kirk, in this one instance, fought with abnormal clarity born from grief, and abnormal ferocity spawned from anger and sorrow. Before Spock could defend himself, could subdue James Kirk, Kirk reeled back and planted a solid, harsh kick against the Vulcan's chest. Spock gaped for air and, as the third punch cracked against his temple, fell back against the sheet grating that formed the floor of the bay.

Kirk descended on Spock, as he drew a sputtering, harsh breath, kneeling on both of his arms, pinning him against the floor. Fierce and startlingly coherent, Kirk stared at the green bruise blooming across his first officer's face and neck, and prepared to strike him again. Spock's eyes closed, reflexively, as he prepared himself for the assault, but none came. Half a heartbeat passed, and Kirk bent nearly in half, crushing his lips against the Vulcan's.

_You've never really dealt with death, have you?_

No.

_Not like this._

Kirk's hands dug into the sides of Spock's head, pressing and pulling at him, crushing him back against the grate and against his own lips in frenzied desperation. Spock didn't move, frozen or stunned in terror, or revulsion, or simple Vulcan stoicism—whichever it was, it didn't matter. Kirk was no telepath, but he pressed on, the lack of oxygen making him lightheaded, slowly sweeping away his grief in the growing swell of suffocation. He tried, harder than he'd ever tried anything, to push all his memories, all Spock's memories, back into this Vulcan. He tried to breathe his old friend into this man, this alien, this...younger self. Tears burned his cheeks and his hands, and when he forced himself away, the blackness of unconsciousness swallowing even the voices of the past, he found Spock—this new aberration, this younger Spock—staring back at him with blank, judgmental eyes. He recalled the calm stillness of his old friend, the tears on _his_ cheeks, and something broke inside Jim Kirk.

"You're not him," his voice was raw with grief, pain, and anger, with lifetimes of emotion, and he felt tired as he stared into those eyes, "Just like I'm not me, not like it was."

Whatever had snapped, whatever gave inside him, it broke his strength and he crumbled. Kirk withdrew from the Vulcan—his body a mottled pattern of pain and exhaustion. His arms burned and prickled with glassy shards of pain, his legs shook as he rose up, and his head was heavy. The bay was silent as Spock pulled himself up off the floor—Kirk choked a quiet sob as he saw his old-friend in the way this Spock adjusted his uniform. The gentle tug of his shirt, the somber elegance of it, painted a red jacket across his shoulders, just for the briefest of moments. Kirk turned from him and found that his legs could no longer hold his weight. His legs gave out and sent him sprawling on the grating. Spock towered above him, but said nothing. Several minutes of hollow silence hovered between them before Spock audibly sighed and clasped his hands behind his back. An air of anger and frustration hovered about him, and the brief flash of sadness—regret?—that danced across his face caught Kirk's broken, unfocused attention.

"We are assembled here today," Spock began dryly, his voice even and his breathing near mechanically regulated, "to pay our final respects to the honored dead."

Kirk watched him, standing in the poor, fluorescent half light of the Jettison Bay, tall and straight, bruised and rigid, and couldn't make out the barest hint of his old friend.

"Yet," he continued and his voice softened. He looked down, but not at Kirk, "it should be noted that in the midst of our sorrow, this death takes place in the shadow of new life, the sunrise of a new world." He took a deep breath, calm depression slipping between his lips as he exhaled. "A world that our beloved comrade gave his life to protect, to nourish. He did not feel this sacrifice a vain or _empty one, and we will not debate his profound wisdom at these proceedings._

Of my friend, I can only say this.

Kirk forgot to breathe for a long time, this stillness in Spock, this foreign frustration, it was familiar and repugnant because it was his own. Kirk heard his voice bleeding through the Vulcan, as he recited his own first and last Eulogy.

"Of all the souls I have encountered in my travels," Kirk repeated calmly and Spock stared at the airlock at the end of the bay. "His was the most...."

"Human." Spock finished and ignored Kirk until his ragged breathing had evened out.

The distant sounds of another Montgomery Scott playing Amazing Grace filled the space between them, and a hundred memories choked his subconscious, all trying to escape at once. San Francisco, Vulcan, the Colony, his quarters, Spock's, the Enterprise, a Klingon ship, this room, here and now. His head throbbed and he winced, when he looked back up Spock was staring at him through this new Spock's eyes, he was young and unfamiliar, but there. Neither moved, but both acknowledged one another with the weary resonance of age they had not yet achieved.

"It was a touching eulogy, appropriate and complimentary," Spock commented and Kirk could hear the slight hitch of sorrow in his vowels. "Though the compunction to speak well of those unaware of the sentiment is most...contradictory to human nature."

"We do try," Kirk answered. His voice, though rough, didn't quail, "How did you find me?"

"I..." Spock hesitated and a smile bloomed across his features—subdued through grief, rather than habit, it was still the most expressive single motion this Spock had ever made, "gave it my best guess."

"You, Spock?" Kirk asked, the remembered banter light and familiar. James Kirk was not Jim Kirk, just as this Spock was not his old friend, and yet they were both simultaneously. The duality of it struck him as melancholy, and Kirk frowned as he tried to follow the convoluted pathway that had lead him to this point, mentally and physically.

"Come," Spock said lightly, interrupting his concerned thoughts and extending a hand, "You appear to have fractured the first and second carpel bones of your left hand, Captain"

Kirk looked down at the limb in question and winced as he spotted the dark, varied pattern of red and the uneven swelling. He was bleeding from his knuckles. He clucked his tongue and frowned at his hand before looking back up at his First officer.

"So I have," Kirk replied in just as conversational a tone, as though he hadn't done it on Spock's jaw. Spock helped him to stand, and the two of them regarded one another in silence for several long seconds. "How many times do I have to tell you to call me Jim?"

Kirk was going to pretend that his upturned lips and the jump the muscle of his neck gave were due to the serious bruise forming across his face rather than restrained laughter.

"Thank you." Neither one of them was sure who said it, but, looking back, it didn't really matter.


End file.
